prologue

STEP 1: NAITE ITA HIDE
[HIDE WHO WAS CRYING]
[1] When I First Met hide
[2] hide, Constantly Walking Ahead
[3] At the Beginning of a Tour, hide Would Get Angry
[4] Just Before My Departure, hide Wept Alone
[5] The Death of hide, Which Changed Everything
STEP 2: MAEMUKI NA HANKOUKI
[A POSITIVELY REBELLIOUS AGE]
[1] Little Masked Rider
[2] The Roles of Siblings
[3] Forbidden Plaything
[4] The Road to Electric Guitar
[8] Restaurant Taiji

STEP 3: EIKOU TO KATTOU
[GLORY AND CONFLICT]
[10] Living for the Moment
[12] Myself, Unchangeable
[13] The Principle of Equality
[14] The Last Stage
[16] Yoshiki
[17] Pata

X NO SEI TO SHI
To my friend hide:

My restless self gazes
To the white clouds beyond the horizon
I ask the spray of the waves to erase this sadness
For the stormy waves to extinguish the screaming in my heart
The smile of the one who floats through the skies
The one who flies completely freely through the universe
I dream of sending you a message like this

In order to conceal the sadness of my heart in the chill wind
I get on my bike and rush away
Though the seasons change
For all eternity, I could never do such a thing as forget you
The smile of the one who floats through the skies
The happy playing of musical tunes
I dream of sending you a message like this

I wanted this search for the soul to be our journey together
I wanted us to build a musical bridge together


X NO SEI TO SHI
Prologue

Taiji, Sawada Taiji…I wonder, do you really know the person called by this name?

It may be that I am not someone who can publish a book that's worthy of a great award.

The fact is, just a little bit before this, I was a homeless man whose very existence had disappeared.

In the things I did after I quit X, my life took a downward turn.

No matter where I go, for some reason I can't settle my mind.

Though I thought that I must have had a screw loose somewhere, my body and my soul were both rusty, and it became hard to move smoothly.

Frankly, even now, I can't find this screw.

But even so, it's true that it's as if something has gone missing.

While I stretch my hands out to receive drop after drop of the oil of hope, I am doing nothing but continuing to polish away at the rust.

Until this heavy rusted body of mine shines brightly with new life again, I will continue to work hard.

And afterwards, I will only continue to look for that misplaced screw. As I gather up the pieces one by one of the rust that has peeled off, I will continue my search.

And so, now having the many pieces of rust in my hands, the time has come when they can finally be able to be made to rest in peace.

At the same time, this is nothing short of a requiem for my friend who is flying freely through the universe: hide.  
http://www.xrdnet.com/xjapan/xnosei_1_1.htm
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 About this capture

X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
1. hide to no Deai
[When I First Met hide]

I first met hide at the Kagurazaka "Explosion" livehouse. I was only 17 at the time, and playing in the band "Dementia." One side of hide could be seen as the leader of the legendary band "Saver Tiger" at the time. For quite some time before, I had said, "I'd like try to be on the same stage with Saver Tiger," and I pleaded with the store manager, and he promised to make it a reality.

The band lead by hide, Saver Tiger, had come to my attention formerly, and of course I wanted to play on the same stage as them, because even when I was just a member of the audience, I would watch them with rapt attention. At the time of the event, I remember the television stations coming to collect footage.

After the performance was over, hide said to me, "Your hair is really freaking awesome."

At that time, my hair stuck up everywhere like a hedgehog. It was a very radical hairstyle. When hide said that to me, I felt so great about the overwhelming power in Saver Tiger's show that to not say this would have been wrong:

"It was a good stage. We could beat any other band like this anywhere."

To tell the truth, I felt that we'd as Dementia and Saver Tiger had eaten up everyone else with our powerful performance.

This time, I'd only talked a bit with hide, so we parted without getting each other's phone numbers or anything.

Unexpectedly I met hide again about two years afterwards. I was participating in the launch of the band of Yoshiki's friend, and hide was there.

Furthermore, Yoshiki and Toshi had started X activities. Though of course hide and I hadn't joined yet, X was becoming pretty famous in the indies world. At any rate, their performance on stage was so overwhelming and fiery that it became a topic of discussion.

Though I had thought "he's a reticent person," from the first time we met, at this band launch, hide just sat there in silence and drank. So I could do nothing but sit and drink too. Even so, we somehow started talking about the artists we liked.

"What bands do you like?" I asked.

hide said, "Really old bands."

Having said that, he proceeded to give examples: T-Rex, Steppin Wolf, Doobie Brothers. As it turned out, those were bands I liked too, so the conversation turned to their styles of playing.

For example, Led Zeppelin.

"I think Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones rocks."

"No way, John Bonham is great."

When hide and I met again then, I felt that our conversation was so sharp and lively, and that hide was a very sensitive person, very in control of himself.

For example, when we were talking about Zeppelin, he didn't just stay on the topic of the band, but instead he thought of talking about if John Bonham or John Paul Jones was good. Furthermore, even if you say that "heta-uma" [1] is a bad thing, his thinking was that it was all right if the things he wanted to convey were said in a clumsy way. Philosophically, hide made you feel an anti-Establishmentarian atmosphere around him.

If I can say this, he was a very punkish person. A cool theorist, smart, good at making people laugh. However, because he never got close to people who didn't suit his taste, he never got involved in anything.

This time too, we didn't give each other our addresses. To think about it, we went through Yoshiki to get to really meet.

Speaking of which, Yoshiki, Toshi, and hide went out to eat. Close to the studio in Ikebukuro, there was a cheap restaurant that served set meals, and they often went there.

He just never went out drinking, because he was a very violent drunk.


X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
2. Tsune ni Saki o Iku hide
[hide, Constantly Walking Ahead]

In X, the one who most matched me and my musical intentions was hide.

For example, I would think of three different arrangements for the same song. When I asked which one was the best, the one who agreed with me usually was hide. We had different ways of expressing it, but our sense of music was the same.

We were the opposite of Yoshiki and Toshi in that both of us thought that rock music shouldn't have ballads. At that time, we wanted to make more hard-hitting rock songs.

Because I gave the other members lots of orders, I was always nagging. But strangely, I didn't do it to hide, and I was never dissatisfied with him.

Rather, being in the center of hide's music, we would be in such synergy that it was just the same as when I would tell the other members things.

At any rate, hide's guitar produced such unique sounds that even now I really love the music that he wrote.

No matter what you say about technique, in saying you could do this, or you could do that, you become almost like an acrobat, but in hide's case, he held in high regard the approach of making a song come alive to the utmost limit.

So, he would give me songs that had a really easy bass part. Of course, that was because the sense of them fitted me.

Next in this development, we never sat down and had conversations like "Let's do this here," but in spite of that, everything fit together smoothly. Actually, there were many times, like Jealousy, when I would say in surprise, "Ah, we should do it like this all the time."

Though I would arrange songs with fairly high self-confidence, hide helped it grow more. In regards to what I played, he helped me grow to 100% in arranging. I really think he was a genius capable of handling anything.

No matter how I say it, hide was someone who was walking far ahead of the 80's way of music conceptualization. Isn't that right? So, maybe there is a little clash of meanings here.

For example, even though I couldn't really understand the times he lived in, there would be many times in which afterwards, I would look back at hide's arrangements and say, "Oh, I get it."

I wasn't the only one who felt so respectful towards hide. I believe firmly that to the other members as well, hide was the leader of calmness.

Though Yoshiki was the band leader, when he would say "hide, what do you think about this?" if hide said, "that's not bad," then everyone else would agree. You could call him X's counselor, as it were.

When he gave advice, hide would first keep quiet and let the other person share their opinion, and then he would say what he thought. Though he was a theorist, he wouldn't hold people down and twist their arms to win an argument, but instead he would use his powers of persuasion.

On the other hand, if I was particularly pleased with something I'd arranged, he'd give me a big, showy reaction. That was the kind of man he was.

Incidentally, you might think it surprising, but hide and I didn't have much of a private friendship outside the band.

No matter how I put it, I was unmarried and the type to think about things other than the band [lit: everything]. I would rather go out and expand my circle of friends outside of X, because I wanted to attract cool people, so I never really went anywhere with hide or went out drinking with him when we were in our off time.

Just once, hide came over to my house.

Of course, because it was noon, we just drank, and while playing guitar, we had conversations like "what should we do about this arrangement here?" As a matter of fact, I wasn't quite sure what hide was talking about as the conversation went on.

hide had a very deep way of talking. It wasn't troublesome or theoretical or anything like that; it was profound. That didn't just end with music either. For example, there was a scene in a movie that he talked to me about and gave all his impressions about, but I couldn't understand what he was getting at.

What was I to do at times like that? The only thing I could do was just to give a bitter smile and kept on drinking or playing my guitar to camouflage the fact that I didn't understand.

  

X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
3. Tour Saki de hide wa Nandomo Kireta
[At the Beginning of a Tour, hide Would Get Angry]

When X started during nationwide, there were many things that we discovered. We woke up. Among those things, I want to tell you one that really left an impression on me.

It happened when the bands Jun Sky Walkers and ZIGGY were around. They and a few other bands that they knew had a joint open-air concert that X also performed in.

All of the bands that were performing were staying in the same hotel, and one night, I and the bassist of ZIGGY were sitting in the hotel lounge having a drink.

Suddenly I saw hide come into the lounge. He was having a drink with M, ZIGGY'S vocalist.

This guy M was usually a really nice guy, but when he started drinking, he would change completely. So when I saw that he was drinking with hide, I thought to myself, "this isn't good."

Sure enough, they two of them began to quarrel. Because hide was also a person who, once something was started, couldn't let go, I saw that the situation was turning into one just as if oil had been poured on a fire.

The quarrel turned into a huge argument, and no one was able to pacify hide, who shook off the restraining hand of a staff member. Grabbing a nearby fire extinguisher, he sprayed it through the entire lounge.

That was really amazing. It goes without saying that the inside of the lounge was entirely wrecked. It was obvious that this was the reason that, from the following year on, X was the only band that stayed in a separate hotel.

Things like this would happen. We were in Hokkaido for a tour.

I was sleeping in the hotel, and in the middle of the night around 2 or 3 AM, I woke up because I could hear an almost yakuza-like fight going on downstairs. It got so loud that I got up, and when I went to see what was going on, I saw that someone was arguing with the people at the front desk in the lobby.

It was a dead-drunk hide.

I remember that it hide was shouting with a feeling of "Bastards! I'll kill you!"

This went on till hide finally held up his fists.

I thought hide was going to punch them, and then he thrust his index finger and middle finger outwards and stuck them up the nostrils of the two front desk people.

The only thing I could do was think in shock, "What the hell?" and almost died laughing. Wasn't he thinking about punching them, and then right when he was on the verge to do so, didn't he change his mind and stick his fingers up their noses instead?

Even doing this, deciding in a split second to stick his fingers up their noses, is harder than just punching someone. The people at the front desk did nothing but plead, "Please stop! Please stop!" Finally, I was able to restrain hide, and he took his fingers out of their noses and it was over, but even now I have no idea what caused this scene to happen.

I don't have a strong sense of duty towards other people, but even so, hide, who got angry so easily, was not affected by it, and the two of us never fought.

hide would want to fight with me, but I could never do that with him, so I would always give up. He would pull me in and assume the pose of someone about to punch me, and then I would say, "Maa, maa, wait just a second. Hold on! Let's drink!"

I wouldn't get provoked and I wouldn't get angry, and so hide would get bored and stop.

Wasn't it just perhaps that hide wanted me to get angry at him?

Even so, in our "3 person alliance" of me, hide, and Yoshiki, we would never be angry at the same time. When I was angry, hide would calm me down, when hide was angry, I would calm him down, and when Yoshiki was angry, it was either me or hide who would calm him down.

But there was a match for hide's uncontrollable temper.

It was a cockroach. Though hide really hated all bugs, out of them all, he especially hated cockroaches, and he would run away when he saw one.

Though we would be rehearsing in the studio, we would have to go on break when we received clear proof of his absence.

X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
4. Dattai Chokuzen, hide wa Hitori de Namida o Nagashita
[Just Before My Departure, hide Wept Alone]

My departure from X was inevitable.

When I think about it now, wasn't everyone saying things like that when I wasn't around? Then Yoshiki, being the band's representative, was the one who told me that I had to go.

It was clear in the first half of December 1991. Yoshiki and I sat down in a room, just the two of us, and we had a talk.

And then, January 7, 1992 at Tokyo Dome.

It was the last time I would be on stage as a member of X, and the other members shouted out at the audience until their voices were gone. However, no one said anything to me, not even a word of goodbye. Not even hide. After all, there was a huge crowd of people and many staff members there, so the members couldn't gather in one place, and they all left to drink with their respective friends.

Surely everyone understood my feelings, and yet they said nothing when they saw me.

And then, afterwards, I heard this.

On New Years' Eve in 1991, X participated in NHK's Kouhouku [trans note: Red and White musician "battle"] and then went to the Rokumeido in Meguro for a countdown live. Afterwards, I heard that hide opened a window and stood there alone staring outside, crying.

When I heard this, I felt like everything inside my head went white, and along with that, many of my memories started appearing and disappearing like a revolving lantern.

After I left X, our schedules weren't very compatible anymore, so hide and I started seeing each other considerably less. I was also starting up the activities of my band "Loudness," and we mostly stopped crossing paths.

And yet, I was always concerned about hide.

In particular, after hide stopped X Japan activities and went solo, I thought that was a great period of growth for him. Actually, because hide and I never saw each other, I had no idea of any personal issues that he had, but the new image of "Myself" that he was making for himself was, in my eyes, a great fresh start for him.

Because he wasn't the leader of X, hide certainly had suppressed a small part of himself, and never said "This is what I want to do." However, it wasn't necessary to suppress anything when he went solo.

I looked on hide partly with feelings of envy, saying "He can do whatever he wants to do..."

Because of all of this, he was also artistic fashionably. He had a great fashion sense.

He looked great in old clothes, and he was also able to dress outrageously in new clothes. The only word I can say about him is "great" [lit: "sugoi"]

In this way, hide pressed ahead on the road he himself had chosen, and the next time I saw him again was, ironically, in May of 1998; the place: a funeral home.
  

X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 1
5. Subete o Kaeta hide no Shi
[The Death of hide, Which Changed Everything]

hide died.

I heard this on the day that hide's remains were enshrined at the funeral home in Shinagawa.

Naturally, I panicked. Then, I called a taxi and got in, but I had no idea where I should go.

The truth is that it was not really told to anyone what funeral home hide had been placed in. Everyone was panicking just like me, and didn't know whether the information that had been given was accurate. The information was also very complicated, so the only thing I was told was the general location.

Because the taxi driver also didn't know when I asked him, I was in such a hurry that I got out of the taxi and started running around looking for it.

I have no idea exactly how many kilometers I ran. I just kept running and running...halfway, I couldn't breathe, and normally my legs would have been hurting and I would have stopped running, but no matter what, I couldn't stop.

And then suddenly I found the place.

Though the viewing hours at the funeral home were until 10 PM, I barely made it there at the last minute. Somehow, I got inside.

I was told hide's whereabouts and they showed me to him.

"Ah, there is a god," I said, and I thanked them as I gasped for breath.

I was the very last person in the viewing hall, and I had a five-minute meeting with hide.

Lying in the casket, hide's face looked proud and noble, a true forward-looking rock and roller to the end.

I was still surprised and stunned, and couldn't believe the reality before my eyes.

Suddenly, I cried out to hide.

"Oi, why are you sleeping?"

The next day, hide's 3-day private funeral started at Tsukijihonwan Temple, and it went on all night.

I never imagined that I would meet the members of X after such a long time in a place like this, with such a sad expression on our faces.

However, coming before the casket that held hide's body, the words that came from our mouths were just:

"What music have you been listening to lately?"

Though we were all musicians, though we were meeting again after a long time, I thought that maybe this was not the occasion for conversations like that.

Butcall of us talked about that on purpose. None of us could grasp the fact that hide was no longer living on this earth. We were trying to avoid the truth of "hide's death."

Didn't all of us want to think that hide hadn't saddened us and made everything painful?

But all the same, we couldn't stop our overflowing tears. Yoshiki, Toshi, Pata, and also mec

We had only exchanged brief words with hide's family, and hadn't said much in the past. That was why this time, we thought we would go to hide's real family.

After hide's death, the media said many things.

Suicide, accidentc

But I think that it couldn't have been anything but an accident. No, that's the only thing I can think.

Usually, a guitarist hangs his strap over his shoulder, and his neck will get sore from headbanging. So he goes in for a massage where his neck is stretched out, and it's possible to heal it like that. hide was doing that with a towel on a doorknob, and died. And because he had been drinking, he must have dropped off to sleep.

It's often said,"When he strangled himself, he was just trying to accomplish the oppositec" hide also gradually became aware of what he was doing. I really believe this.

When hide died, everything inside me changed.

In particular, that first year afterwards was painful. I denied it, and was very hard on myself. I kept drinking, and I kept being confused.

Then I thought about hide's dying wish and the fact that there was something I had to do.

That was: music. I resolved to start music again.

So then, I thought that everyone should think more about what "life and death" was. The result of my thinking was that I thought that I should have my own opinions and purpose, and if I reached the answer to what I was living for, that was all that mattered.

Now, I am walking and looking ahead.

This strength is what hide has presented me with. What did hide's life mean to me? But I can't find the words to answer that question.

There are too many answers to that for me to put them into words.

X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 2
1. Chisana Kamen Ridaa
[Little Masked Rider]

I used to think that stories of my childhood weren't worth much. Just a short time ago, I would think, isn't it enough that I show you "the me of the present"? But now, it's different.

The me of the present is made up of all of those things. I have come to believe that the nature that I was born with and the experiences that I have absorbed and rejected over time have made me who I am today.

It was July 12, 1966, a hot summer day. It was the birthday of the second son of the Sawada family, Taiji.

My birthplace was Ichigawa City, in Chiba prefecture. Of course, though I don't have any memories of me as a baby, as far as I've seen from pictures, I was born in quite a regular family, and seem to have been generally happy.

A fragment of memory that is left behind is from when I was in kindergarten. I wonder if it is a special characteristic of second sons that they grow to be naughty boys.

At any rate, I liked to play outside a lot of the time, and if my friends were there, I would be very happy. I never lost to any of my friends, but at the same time, that meant that we had huge fights.

From that time on, I was the leader, a boy who never lost. For example, I would say "We're going to play tag now," and without saying a word, everyone would do as I said.

In my case, I didn't just fight, but I had a strong sense of justice, and at that time, I was the same as the hero "Kamen Rider" [trans note: Kamen Rider means "Masked Rider." It was a famous anime series back in the day.] Though I had some meaningless fights, I was not a coward who picked fights and damaged things. Wasn't that why everyone instinctively said, "We will definitely call you 'Kamen Rider,' the defender of justice"?

Surrounded by friends who called out, "Tai-chan! Tai-chan!" more and more, I simply took on the manner of a child leader. I truly passed the days of my kindergarten years with a sense of brilliance. However, because this "sense of justice" that was born at that time would later cause my life to go crazy, life is a very cynical thing.

2. Kyoudai no Yakuwari
[The Roles of Siblings]

People are always saying "Kids should have a lot of siblings," and "someone who is an only child is lonely," and things like that, and I do not understand at all the reasoning of those people who say that.

Maybe there really is merit to it. However, even if everyone shares the same genes, there will be things that don't match up. Because you are siblings, it's unbelievable how many times you fight and then make up immediately afterwards. On the other hand, because "once a sibling, always a sibling," I think that you will continue to be dragged along by whatever the other person does.

As for me, I have a an older brother. He's different from me; he was an honor student. He was good at studying, really the stereotypical older brother.

Because I had this kind of a brother, I promised something to myself when I was still small.

"My brother competes with me for studying. So I'm going to play sports cause he's bad at them!"

What's more, I was thinking, "Good thing the Sawada family has an eldest son. It's best for me to leave everything to him."

Because of that, I was always at odds with my brother, and even though we would play together, I was always cold to him. So we never fought. What's more, I would have nothing to do with him.

Maybe it's that brothers and sisters carry that element of setting a bad example for each other.

However, it was entirely different with my younger sister. Masayo was really a great friend, and I loved her. When she would come home crying, no matter what I would face the person who made her cry and say, "What did you do to my beloved sister!?"

My little sister would cry "Oniichan, oniichan!" and I would think to myself, "I have to protect her!" and every day, I grew stronger so that I could do that.

At that time, what happened was that the stronger I grew, the more worried I got about her, and even when she would go out to play and came home late, I would scold her more than was necessary. I was just like a father who had an only daughter. Masayo also really loved music, and she would gather her friends together close to our house, and, getting up on a stage, would proudly mimic popular idols to applause, and she would have a satisfied look of joy on her face. That was just when she was 3 or 4 years old.

I'm bragging, but Masayo really is good at singing. Even now, she's active with her talent in a music unit called "Cybernation Network" and has put out 5 singles.

At that time, my strongest feeling was, "I have to protect those who are weaker than me, those who are important to me."

In order to do that, even to this day, my position is that if I see a weak person or someone who is being oppressed, I feel that I have to free them, and I'm filled with the energy to do something alongside those people.

3. Kinjirareta Asobi
[Forbidden Plaything]

All musicians have limitless imaginations, but in the middle of ordinary days surrounded by music, I think there is one main cause that makes our many musical talents start to bloom.

That was the case with me. We had a guitar in my house and my father used to play it. My family wasn't one that would give us education in things we enjoyed, so whenever my father played the guitar, I would sit next to him and watch, and for some reason, I remembered it.

The first time I copied his playing, the guitar was a "forbidden plaything." I was in second grade. It was the first time I held a guitar, and after I challenged the idea of a "forbidden plaything," 3 months passed, and I could play it. At the same time, I got on stage at our second grade school assembly for the first time.

That was an opportunity for me, and more and more I became a prisoner of the guitar and then music.

The genre of music was expanding for me, and when I heard the Beatles and Queen for the first time, I definitely received a shock.

I wanted to be like that someday. Just like people who have found an interest in music for the first time, I wanted to make music like the music which was able to influence me.

As an aside, out of all the songs of Queen that I heard, the one that really struck me was "We are the Champions" [trans note: Taiji spells it as "We are The CHAMPION"]. But I couldn't accept that vocalist Freddie Mercury's homosexuality was the cause of him passing away, and it was a great shock to me.
4. Eleki e no Michi [The Road to Electric Guitar]

After the period where I was enamoured by the acoustic guitar of Queen and the Beatles, I started listening to Kiss, Rainbow, and Motorhead.

The first LP I bought was "I Surrender" and my first 7 inch record was by John Denver. At that time when I was in middle school, I was a genuine Western music freak. Because of that, I was the one who would tell my Japanese-music-crazy classmates about Western music.

My middle school was high-class so I commuted, but I stopped studying, and got into Chiba Meitoku High School only because they had music class. But somehow, others of my friends who, like me, didn't even go to look at the announcement of who had passed the entrance exams, ended up passing.

With that, the days began where I threw myself entirely into music. My first year in high school I got an electric guitar, but I already had a guitar case from 8th grade.

The electric guitar was relatively easy, and I began copying songs from Rainbow and Motorhead. From Japanese bands, I would copy songs from kid's bands and Loudness.

On the other hand, for music, the class that had been my deciding factor in coming to this high school, I played the Beatles. Just as I thought, even after all these years, the artist who I had first been interested still had a place inside my heart.
. Restaurant Taiji

When I was in elementary school, the only thing I was interested in was food. Lately, it's very rare that an elementary school student is able to cook. That is to say, outside of being busy with lessons and cram school, nowadays mothers tell their kids that it's too dangerous and don't let them into the kitchen.

But food is something that if you don't practice at, you forget how to make it. Holding a kitchen knife by yourself, trying to flip a frying pan for the first time, learning to check how hot the fire is without hurting yourself...

I started making meat patties and pilaf in the kitchen when I was still in the lower grades at elementary school. Because now you can buy these things frozen, I've stopped making them, but even though back then I could only make pilaf, I had to learn to make it from start to finish, from cracking the egg open to adding in various ingredients.

By repeating this over and over, I became used to doing it.

By the time I was in 4th grade, I'd added enough to my repertoire so that periodically I would have friends over for "lunch parties." Beforehand, I'd make a lunch menu and lunch tickets, and sell them to friends at school for 50 yen.

At the time, I thought 50 yen was a lot of money, but my lunch tickets always sold out. Also, I gave free seconds, and I would always make at least 4 or 5 kinds of food.

On Saturdays, my friends who pick what they liked to eat and walk to my house with their lunch tickets. "Restaurant Taiji" was only open on weekends. I would serve meat patties, spaghetti, curry rice, pilaf, etc. When I received their lunch ticket, they would pick the kind of food they wanted to eat and I would serve the customer.

That was a kind of surreal "playing restaurant," a unique event. Because of that, my house was really the place to be on weekends, as expected. My food was valued so much that people would pay to eat it.
10. Shunkan o Ikiru
[Living for the Moment]

The most severe thing that ever happened to me then was having 14 stitches in my arm to sew up an injury.

The day before our concert at Osaka-jo Hall, I went out alone and got into a accident; I didn't brake in time and smashed into a glass window. I was rushed to the hospital right away and got stitches, and they gave me some morphine for the pain, but the doctor's verdict was: "It's impossible for you to play bass like this." The medicine they gave me suppressed the pain, but he said that in the middle of playing, my wound could open back up.

But even so, no matter what condition I was in, I wanted to play in the live. "There's tens of thousands of people waiting for me. I can't disappoint the fans," I pleaded, unable to fight against my enthusiasm. The next day, I took a ton of morphine and went on stage. Because of the medicine, I felt no pain and had a great live.

Since that time, Osaka-jo Hall has become a legendary place for me.

Thinking about it, it wasn't just limited to accidents, but we really broke a lot of things. So we kept having to pay compensation for things. Even so, somehow I was the only one who had the experience of once not being able to pay someone back for something I did.

Before we won the best new band prize on a cable prize show, I was arrested for destroying some receptacles in a fight and was held for several days in custody. I'm not sure if I have a short temper or supreme calm, but I have the strange thought of needing to destroy the evidence after I smash everything in sight, so that can't be helped...obviously, that was the only time I stopped to reflect on it.

Fights are definitely not a good thing, but we were always fighting over something. Maybe by fighting, we were trying to destroy all the common sense and contradiction in the world.

There wasn't anything that we had to protect. It was really a repeating of tension and strain. Because of that, I think, betting everything on a single moment, we lived for that moment with all our might.

Out of all the modern rock bands, I wonder if there are any who have managed to carry out what we did when we existed. We were a little like "flightless birds."

12. Kawarenai Jibun
[Myself, Unchangeable]

I think I'm an "unchangeable man."

Even after becoming famous, I didn't change. Even after our major debut, when my life underwent a 180 degree turn, that didn't change the core of who I was.

Surely, when I think of the old days where we had trouble scraping together the "Indies 5,000 yen," I think that my attitude towards money has changed since then. Because the figures I am making have changed, it was probably inevitable.

When you become prosperous, you start to become greedy.

Of course, you buy high-class foreign cars, houses, and designer clothes, and you receive VIP treatment and start leading a rich lifestyle. Maybe this is a kind of dream that people who were born rich can't understand: a kind of proof that your dream really did come true.

X's members were unusual in that we didn't do that.

The objects of our interests differed, but individually, we each caught hold of the "proof" that defined us.

I thought that this was all right. Because we were in a rock band, it couldn't be helped that these things caught our eye. The image of success that each person sketches for himself will be different...

However, to me, "success" was a little unique. More than a high-class car, I wanted a bike, and more than a personal chauffer, I wanted a team.

Yes, my dream was to create a biker gang, and to arrive with them on our bikes all at once at whatever place we were having our live.

Once, we had a Harley team in one of our videos, and the image of that time has always stayed strongly with me [trans note: Taiji must be talking about the Celebration PV long version]. I have always thought this is what "rock" is.

My attitude didn't change either when we went on Kouhaku [trans note: NHK's "Red and White Battle" show on New Years' Eve].

There were singers who bought tons of clothes, but I always dressed in leather. Also, when we were recording for TV, the other members would bring out the flashy expensive clothes that they bought, but I would stand off to the side and dress in regular clothes and it didn't bother me.

Ever since I was young, I've always hated doing the same thing as someone else. I discovered that it was meaningless and thoroughly avoided it.

So I think that I was always regarded as an annoying "bump on the forehead" by X. Though I realized that they thought about me in this way, I still couldn't change. There was nothing around me that could sway me.

This is because I have always lived spontaneously. I think that I have kept the "spontaneous body" of human beings' original nature, since I didn't change at all from when I first joined X..

13. Byoudoshugi
[The Principle of Equality]

When I look back, the time that everything began was the Blue Blood tour.

The five of us all had different ideas, and when we made a song, we wrestled amongst ourselves and those ambitions. As a matter of fact, whenever we had a rehearsal, we were made by Yoshiki to play the songs how he wanted them from start to finish.

At the time, I had a very big, very impudent mouth. "The other members are writing songs too. You really need to distribute the songs evenly among us. You're the leader, but that doesn't mean you don't make mistakes."

The staff would stop us, and we would end up not speaking to each other.

The members would just think, "They're fighting again," and the staff would side with Yoshiki.

So I was left behind to fend for myself.

In that case, I shouldn't have talked to Yoshiki but rather to the staff. The fact was that it wasn't Yoshiki, but the people around him, who were trying to carry this out.

But even though I understood this in my head, for some reason I kept fighting Yoshiki head-on. In those days, maybe I was lost somewhere in the people around me who kept exaggerating the circumstances and trying to intervene. It was a long year for me, and I fought with all my friends; even though things changed around me, I couldn't change a thing.

For a while after that, I was the only one with a special contract. It was a studio musician contract. It was a result I brought upon myself, because I continued to fight for equal shares within the band.

Truthfully, because what I was doing was just being hurtful to X, what happened next was a foregone conclusion. Even now, I don't know whose idea it was, but I pray it wasn't Yoshiki's.

We just kept digging the ditch deeper and deeper. So during a conversation about royalties, everything was decided.

Yoshiki said, "Please quit."

And I answered, "I understand. I'll quit."

That was all I said. Yoshiki had only one reply to me.

"I'm sorry."

My blood was boiling, but that one word immediately made me go very still. But truthfully, I believe that inside that one word, "sorry," were hidden many other words.

However, because back then I was a stupid idiot who only took things at face value, I couldn't read that deeply into Yoshiki's words.

So then, accepting the terms that I was to stay until the end of the three day Tokyo Dome live, I began the countdown for me to leave the band.

14. Saigo no Steeji
[The Last Stage]

There were three days left in the countdown until I withdrew from X. It was 1992, January 5, 6, and 7 of TOKYO DOME 3 DAYS. After the last stage, I would no longer be in X.

When Yoshiki told me that he wanted me to leave X, the truth was that he only wanted me to stay till the end of those three days.

Perhaps the reason was that in the middle of our conversations when I would turn belligerent and try to pick a fight, I would mistakenly say too much.

But still, I wanted to stay and play till the end of the three days. "When the three days is up, then I'll quit," I said to Yoshiki, and when I said that, Yoshiki told all the people he was talking with to go outside, and we had a one-on-one talk.

Because of that, I was able to stay till the very end.

All throughout those three days, I played my bass with the thoughts of "quitting" whirling through my head.

I was prepared. From the time that Yoshiki had whispered to me about joining X, I had had to live my entire life for the sake of X.

X was my everything.

Many thoughts were running together. I expected everyone else to feel the same way. No matter how everything would end, up on that stage we were comrades-in-arms who had gone through a long year of battle together; we were best friends.

The last day at Tokyo Dome--- Upon that stage, everything truly ended.

That day was the only time where, though I tried and tried to hold them back, the tears kept coming. Toshi and hide and Pata and Yoshiki were also crying.

Until the last, I embraced them one by one and cried.

And then I faced Yoshiki with honestly and held him and wept.

With that, it was over.

As I left the stage for the last time, I thought: "I love Yoshiki. As one man to another, truly, I wouldn't let Yoshiki go for anything in the world."

In that moment when everything I had vanished, those were my true and honest thoughts.

Surely, Yoshiki was tired. On top of having to keep making music, he had all these disruptions come into his life one by one, and I suppose he was tired of me insisting upon equality within the band. And so maybe he cut me out from his life because he was tired of it.

We were different; Yoshiki was the leader who held all the responsibility.

Perhaps even to something like this, he was being forced repeatedly to do it against his will by other people for "the sake of X."

Because Yoshiki's memories are more painful than anyone else's, it doesn't matter if you call him was "extraordinary" or a "king." Now I can clearly say that because of the things he did, he's now received his true reward, the reward that he deserves.

On January 7, 1992, 15,000 people came out to see us at TOKYO DOME 3 DAYS and left us with a miraculous record, and I informed them that I was leaving X.

In a way, it was also a way of summarizing the past 6 years.
Out of all the members of X, Pata was the one member most unlike me. Everything he did was my opposite. Softspoken and steady, he was naturally protected by the other members.

He had opinions, but unlike me, he never spoke them, and he usually never disagreed with anyone either. He never argued, but just sat there in his chair drinking a beer, remaining calm.

Gentle from the start, perhaps he might have been the one person in X who acted most like an adult.

There was only one thing that could change him from that. That was "Giants: Win or Lose?" [trans note: the Yomiuri Giants are one of the six pro-baseball teams from the Tokyo area, and the most popular team in Japan]

He was such a huge Giants fan that even the office he created was named "Office Giants." So if the Giants lost, he would be in a bad mood and would lose his temper easily. In our group, our implied rule was: "If the Giants lost, today Pata will be pissed off."

The first time we played at Tokyo Dome, he was moved for a different reason than the rest of us. That was because he was standing on the home field of the Giants. At breaks in rehearsal, he'd play ball with Toshi. His face was filled with a happiness that I can't describe.

Pata the Giants fan also had something he didn't like. He hated soba. Ever since he was a child, he has had an allergy to buckwheat.

Once at some elementary school that was serving soba for school lunch, one of the students who was forced to eat it died. Dying from eating soba might seem ridiculous, but to him, it was a very serious problem.

Once, I went with Pata and two other people to a soba farm. It was bad. When he reached the train station, he was coughing and sneezing, his nose was running, his eyes were watering...as he rode the taxi, he could do nothing but say, "This is terrible. I can smell the soba. If I stay here, I will die. I have to leave!"

At that time, I didn't know about Pata's allergy to soba, so I just said, "What are you talking about? I love soba! Let's go eat."

Now that I think about it, if we were eating and someone ordered soba, he would usually leave the table.

Pata is just someone who is very clear on what he likes and dislikes. Perhaps these two things are what rule his life. It is easy to understand him but hard to get to that point, and the only time when Pata was never bothered by anything was when he was drunk.